Education: Attended Hunter College in New York for two years with a major in English (to prepare for screenwriting)

Vin Admires: Mel Gibson and Morgan Freeman

About: Vin grew up in a government-funded building in New York's Greenwich Village. The building, Vin estimates, housed hundreds of families when he was there. Vin describes his family as "poor but artistic".** Vin started acting at the young of 7 at a Manhattan theater, where he received $20 a week. He then spent the formative years of his life trying to make a name for himself on off-off-off Broadway stages while going to school.

At the age of 26, his film Multi-facial (a short film he wrote, directed, produced and starred in) premiered at the Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan in front of 200 people. The film later went on to the Sundance Film Festival. "That night changed my life completely," he says. "I still went through a few more years of sleeping on couches and struggling and taking odd jobs outside film. But I knew my life had changed."** After Multi-facial he went on to make Strays, a 1997 Sundance Film Festival entry. And that's when it all began. Apparently Steven Spielberg like Vin's movie so much that he contacted Vin, telling him that he had written a part specifically for him in Saving Private Ryan (1998) as Private Adrian Caparzo. Later, in 1999 he would provide his voice to the animated film The Iron Giant as the Iron Giant.

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